In many video games, a player may compete against another player either in person or via an online platform that integrates the play of multiple players through a network. Many online games offer leaderboards which allow a player to judge how a particular game play session compared against other game players. However, it is often difficult to compare the player's skill to another player's since many conventional leaderboards measure a level achieved or certain standard statistics, but may not consider the amount of time played to do so. Further, many players are driven by and desire to compete at all levels of game play. For example, a player may desire to not only be the player with the highest score but also to be the best player with a particular game weapon or accessory or a combination thereof.
Thus, the ability to evaluate their performance, at varying degrees of detail, in real-time is valuable for video game players, especially when playing competitive online multiplayer games. Simple performance metrics are often used to display basic statistics on performance. Examples of such metrics include the number of kills, kill/death ratio, scores, achievements, timings, and levels passed. The ability to display performance over a geographical map of a virtual game can add valuable information on performance at specific map engagement areas, map lanes and choke points. Spatial data like this can be displayed as a heatmap or colored overlay on the underlying 2D map. Video games however, are challenged to provide and manage such maps in-game and in near real-time, that is, as a player is engaged in a game play session.
One of the major challenges encountered by video game programs in providing detailed real time performance data for each player is the management of data of numerous players based on such non-standard statistics. Further, in online multiplayer games usually very little historical information about a player is available on the game client, such as a console, PC or mobile device. This is because such a feature is highly bandwidth and memory intensive, as it requires the player information to be loaded and saved between matches. Trying to store and manage large amounts of historical performance information is not feasible, as it would have to be uploaded each time a match is played. However, to provide a detailed heatmap, such player information is required.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system that addresses the above challenges and provides performance data in real time to the players and also presents the data in a simplified and easy to understand manner, such as in the form of a heatmap. There is also a need for presenting performance data in a manner that accurately represents barriers inaccessible to players, such as walls and objects, which may occur in complex game maps. It is also desired that the system provides historical measure of a player's performance, thus processing to accumulate data over a number of matches, rather than providing just a single metric over the last match played.